a 2% economy is not what i want. more free market capitalism could double it to four. good evening. i'm larry kudlow. this is the kudlow report. a killer storm takes aim on the eastern seaboard. weather channel bryan norcross has more. >> i'm hurricane specialist bryan norcross from the weather channel. hurricane sandy is still expected to move north and form into a combination hurricane nor'easter and be a massive storm with massive impacts across the northeastern and mid-atlantic parts of the u.s. i'll have the story from the weather channel in just a few minutes. >> all right thanks very much. but first up, the cia is denying a report that it refused to help

its operatives on the ground the night of the benghazi attack. cnbc eamon javers has more on this one. good evening. >> reporter: good evening. the cia is pushing back aggressively against these media reports. let me bring you what the cia is saying this evening. they say we can say with confident that the agency reacted quickly to aide our colleagues during that terrible evening in benghazi. moreover no one at any level in the cia told anybody not to help those in need. claims to the contrary is inaccurate. he went on say how many officer on the ground fared that evening. the cia pushing back make it clear that the agency didn't tell anyone who was involved in that attack on that compound not to go to the aid of their comrades. >> one quick question. does that leave the door open, the way that cia response was

written, that some higher power inside the government told them not to put any assets on the ground? is that a possibility? the nic? the defense department? the oval office? i don't know. is that what pwhat happened? >> reporter: you have to look very carefully at the four corners of this statement. it says what it says and nothing else. what they are saying is nobody, the agency reacted quickly and no one at any level at the cia told anybody not to help those in need. now you have to ask what's not in this statement. were there other people telling people not to rush to the aid of their comrades. was there some third situation going on that we're not even aware of yet. all of those things are possible. you have to look at exactly the words on the page when these things are drafted. they are drafted very, very carefully. >> thank you. now we're going switch back to

this hurricane story. hurricane sandy is barreling up the east coast on a collision course with a powerful nor'easter. the combination could be devastating. our own mary thompson has the latest on the impact on business. good evening, mary. >> larry, people are comparing this storm to last year's hurricane irene the tenth costliest in history. now from its command center today, home depot sending sump pumps, shop vacs anticipating lining irene a lot of coastal and inland flooding. for home depot that means demand for carpeting picks up after the storm. if there's any extra profit for the retail that comes out of this storm it comes from demand not pricing. home depot locked in prices this morning just to make sure that consumers will not get gouged. as for paying for the property, property and casualty insurers in good shape thanks to higher premiums and a lack of major events. a major storm may allow some of

them to pass on higher prices to their clients. restaurants will see business decline. restaurants like this group you see here can take solace from the fact the storm is hitting did your the slow part of their week. as for the power provider the big exposure these four have in the mid-atlantic region where the heaviest rains and flooded is forecast. any earnings risk lies in prolonged outages in those areas. farther north where heavy wind can cause outages, utilities building on lessons learned from last year. more using social immediate kwa keep customers informed and calling for reinforcements early on. there's a lot of wind expected with this storm larry and so they put people in place in the event some of the power lines and the trees get knocked down. >> we had the same thing on that last one, irene. >> in connecticut. >> that's exactly right. so what i gathered was that the power companies were bringing people, construction people from at least the whole eastern half

of the united states. >> a number of them have already checked to make sure they have the people who can take down the trees if needed and then they have other replacement from some other, to help them set up the power lines again. >> did they make money or give it back to the customers? >> sometimes they give it back. i'm not quite sure. there's obviously you have an outage so they lose money because demand isn't there. >> i'm a free market capitalist but sometimes these are tough extranalities. >> it is. when you see home depot saying we're locking in prices now. >> that's the right thing to do. >> it is. they do get it with higher demand. for some high ticket items. how many people buy a shop vac. no one wants to profit from any kind of a disaster. but they want to make sure that customers are treated fairly. >> mary thompson thank you. coming up the numbers are stunning. the fiscal cliff, the stalemate in washington already costing

the united states 1 million jobs. later on the monster hurricane sandy. we'll have more on it, 41 dead already. being called the worst storm in 100 years and it will have financial centers on high alert. lease don't forget free market capitalism the best path to prosperity. if this country had more of it we would have taken that 2% gdp and made it 4%. on kudlow. we'll be right back. ♪

welcome to the world leader in derivatives. welcome to superderivatives.

welcome back. the cia is pushing back and it looks like they are joining the cover up. but i just want to know one thing and it's my major question the whole week about this benghazi question why aren't u.s. government forces, i mean all of the forces didn't save our men on the ground in a benghazi? my mentor on this wrote a brilliant article, former assistant secretary of defense, the co-author of the new book "into the fire a fires hand account of the extraordinary battle in the afghanistan war." all right. first of all, you heard the cia deny that they did not deny a request from their own agents on the ground. that seems to be story. they made a request, operators on the ground said help us and

the cia denied they didn't do anything. what does that mean? does that leave the door open that other people told them not to do it? i don't understand this. >> absolutely, larry. the cia were evasive. we didn't tell them to stand down but that doesn't mean somebody else didn't. if you have a navy s.e.a.l. and twice he's in the middle of a fire fight and your ambassador is missing, and twice he says help me, he calls for fire, he knows what he's doing and you don't give him any help, somebody has screwed up big time. and now they are covering up. >> mean i just -- you wrote a brilliant piece earlier this week, first aid the living. this is what got me going on this. to me even more than the cover up. even more than the cover up and the politics of the cover up i don't know is this. why didn't we help our own

people. this is america. now, i want to get your reaction to something the president told denver's kusa-tv earlier today. take a listen. this is on the protection issue. >> the minute i found out what was going on i gave three clear directives. number one, make sure that we're securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. i guarantee you that everybody in the state department, our military, cia, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. these are our folks. >> all right. what the heck is that? what is that? we made every effort to secure our people? they did not. there were cries for help. there were many ways. sigonella in the mediterranean. what so talking about? >> he's changed his story. before he wasn't saying that. before he was saying that he had later said secure the embassies.

now he's saying i gave them the order. if he did, then general dempsey should be called before some committee and say general when your commander-in-chief told you to move those force why didn't you move them. i bet you general dempsey would say sir i was never told to move those forces. >> the plot thickens. now it's getting worse. this cover-up thickens. >> up bet. you bet. i think that they are going to try to just let this go beyond the election and then just roll it over. i think it's wrong. >> you've said -- look we could have moved jet fighters from sigonella the base, there we could have had commandos. some people say between sigonella and benghazi it's two hours flight to bring in commandos or more special forces to get them on the ground. it was a six to seven hour fire fight. our guys were stuck in that cia annex. we had plenty of time to mount an overkill. an overkill for heaven's sake.

this is what i don't get. these are our people. these are our soldiers and diplomats. how could we not have done this? >> i'm flabbergasted. it defies everything that we stand for. any time i'm out with a squad in afghanistan, if we get into a fire fight that squad immediately calls for air and that air is there within 15 to 20-minute. we could have had fast flyers overhead which was asked for on the ground. he said i have the coordinates. give me some help. he knew how to call in air and they never sent the fast flyers. we had these special operations teams that know what they were doing and could have been there within two hours. our embassy. god bless our embassy at tripoli, 400 miles away they send an aircraft right away and we did nothing and the secretary of defense says well you don't take action until you know everything? what? you can't fight a war if you wait until you know everything. that's silly.

>> you cite in your notes here, you remind us that president ronald reagan in 1984 ordered action in sigonella in the mediterranean area in 90 minutes after learning about problems he ordered action. in 90 minutes. these guys had six, seven hours and more. reagan did that. >> i had the honor of working for president regan and when issues like that came up, he just said go. they are americans help them and in this particular case ironically it was sigonella and the terrorists were on board an aircrafter and he said go get them and if you have to shoot them down. >> up cite in your article this is so important i have quoted it and i know other people in other networks have quoted it, you say that there was a 5:00 p.m. meeting in the oval office between president obama, vice president biden, and defense secretary leon panetta that was

on 9/11. and by 5:00 p.m. eastern time they would have had already two of the three emails. what do you think happened? do you think at that meeting they decided to hatch this cock and bull story and not to allow the troops to go and not to play this higher and not to do the things that patriotic people would do? what happened at that oval office meeting? >> i can't get into the minds of what they did larry. i do know as of 5:00 p.m. when they met, they already knew that the american ambassador was missing in action in the middle of a fire fight with terrorists. the american ambassador, equivalent to a four star general, the symbol of america, he's missing. and we don't move our military forces? i'm baffled by it. i think the nation is baffled by it. >> he owes everybody an explanation. what do you make of the latest now today, hillary clinton is saying that she wanted to add security in benghazi and that

the president said no. now that looks like she's jumping ship but what do you think? how does it sound to you? >> i'm not a politician, that's getting into a political world that i really can't comment on. but i do think that some congressional committee should ask people to come before them so that this doesn't happen again. they choked. they just choked and americans died and that's wrong. >> under oath, they ought to testify under oath. you know what? no two stories or no two statements coming out of the administration are the same. that's the most amazing thing. it's sort of like they are making it up as they went along because they don't want to hide what the truth is even though none of us know what the heck the truth really is. >> well the one thing that they have to be very careful about is that there are tapes. there are tapes of everything that happened over those seven hours. and sooner or later it's going to come out.

>> wow. okay. ben west his newest book "into the fir" is available now in bookstores. thank you. you honor us. great work. coming up, folks, everybody is talking about the economic devastation and the job losses that would happen if we go over the fiscal cliff. did you know it's already started? and we haven't even gotten there yet. i'm talking about the possible million jobs lost in manufacturing. we'll have the head of the nam right next up on "the kudlow report". [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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>> if it isn't fixed the fiscal cliff will impact all of us. higher unemployment and more than 6 million jobs lost. that according to a national association manufacturing study that's out today. it's worse than we thought. the fiscal cliff stalemate in washington has already cost us a million jobs this year. very sobering report. the president and ceo of the national association of manufacturers is here. jay, up until the last couple of months it seemed like manufacturing particularly has been having a goodyear two. where did this million job loss come from. it's the first i heard of it. >> you hit it exactly right. two-thirds of manufacturers think that there's too much uncertainty in the system right now and not willing to grow, not willing to invest and not willing to hire new people

because they don't know what will happen in washington. you've been talking about the weather and what's coming up the east coast. the fiscal storm, the anybody storm hitting this country will be frankly catastrophic if we go over the cliff. >> all right. what's your best guess? in other words, let's do some scenarios quickly. look, members of congress hear this you have a bunch of ceos yesterday 80 or 100 ceos putting pressure on. you're putting prurk on everybody. what happens if i want goes over let's say past january 1st. you know they will get it done in the first quarter but if you lit the cliff in december what happens? people just pull back? do they freeze or do they breathe a sigh of relief that something goodwill happen? >> our report says there won't be an immediate hit but it will be kind of a slow fall over the cliff and what will end up happening is by 2014 over 6 million jobs will be lost in the economy and we could probably face upwards of 11%

unemployment. >> that's if they do nothing. and let all the taxes go up. >> that's right. >> that's what your report is saying. >> that's right. if they hit december 31st and don't do anything i don't think there's any guarantee we'll see a reversal of the situation that they've put this country in. >> you can't turn that ship around on a dime is that what you're saying? >> that's right. it's hard to turn that ship around. what you're talking about is a massive tax increase and from a manufacturing standpoint, the nam, national association of manufacturers board of directors met in washington this week and what i heard from all of them regardless of the size of their company is that they just weren't willing to invest, they are not willing to hire because they are very worried about what washington either will or won't do come december 31st. >> the one thing that is corroborating your story, i'm not sure about jobs per se, the jobs have done pretty well. but capital goods, core capital

goods, long investment in plans and equipment and building that's not happening and not been happening for quite some time. now whether that's the fiscal cliff, jay, or china, or whether that's europe or whether that's obama care, or whether that's, you know, raising taxes on rich people which some presidents have been threatening, there's a lot of reasons. >> you're talking about what manufacturers have been facing for years, a 20% cost disadvantage to manufacture in this country versus anywhere else in this world after you take out the cost of labor. because of our tax policy, because of our regulatory policy, because of our energy policy. and that's what's on the books today. imagine what will happen if we suddenly throw this massive additional tax burden on manufacturers both large and small and also end up with a massive cut to defense spending which will adversely impact defense manufacturers all up and down the supply chain as well. >> who is carrying your water on the hill?

who are your closest allies? who will help you pilot this thing and drive it. >> it depends on who you ask. nobody wants to see this nation go over the fiscal cliff or frankly i call it the fiscal abyss because you don't know what's below you. but nobody is willing to say hey this is the path forward that we need to take. so what we're doing we're looking at any proposals that comes forward and freeze warningly none have yet with an eye towards growth. it's a proposal put on the table going to then economy grow because if it doesn't grow, we'll never see the rebound in the economy that we so desperately need. >> what i'm getting at and it's a pet hobby of mine in this season. mitt romney says he will reach across the aisle to make various fiscal deals and president obama just didn't do that, didn't have the capacity to do it, didn't seem to have the interest to do it, that's the political dynamic out on the campaign trail. what i'm asking you is are there

democrats and republicans, let's start in the senate, one hears a group of six, a group of eight, a group of 12, people like that who can find common ground that will stop this big tax hike, that will help manufacturing, that will give you a corporate tax cut, for example, which i know you all want. is there a leadership, a d and an r that could find common ground and lead to us the promised land. >> it's not just corporate taxes but also individuals. two-thirds of manufacturers pay taxes at the individual tax rate. to your question about who is helping who is not, we're hearing a lot of rhetoric from both sides and frankly we haven't seen a lot of action. here we are two months before the december 31st deadline, ten days before an election and nothing has happened. this is not exactly as if this problem materialized overnight. we've known it for the last two years. the leadership in washington, frankly on both sides of the

aisle have abdicated their responsibility to come forward with any meaningful plan. we've been very encouraged by what we've heard out of both campaigns for president on their commitment to manufacturing and their commitment to building a stronger manufacturing base. but besides rhetoric we need to see action. >> they really screwed up. look, the house leadership, democratic -- they shouldn't have waited until the last minute. you're talking -- >> last minute and this cliff is looming right before us. cost us a lot of jobs. >> 16 working days in the lame duck congress that's what i heard? >> that's right. >> they are supposed to figure out this whole thing. >> all right, jay, thank you. appreciate you coming back on. coming up on kudlow report economic growth tops forecast with 2% growth in the third quarter. all right. but it's still snail speed. and by the way it's a little bit phoney because of the pop in government spending. question is what is the outlook for the country's anemic recovery. that's next up.

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welcome back to "the kudlow report". i'm larry kudlow. in this half hour as i said last night folks more and more it looks like this presidential race is over.

but if you had any doubts even after today's anemic gdp take a listen to vice president joe biden. >> you can't erase what you've done. they voted for tax rates for the wealthy giving tax rates to 1250,000 families. >> 500 trillion. that there is the gift that keeps on giving mr. vice president. joe, it's the math. not only do you have the math wrong you have the whole analysis wrong of tax reform. that's called 0-2 on the campaign trail. now, let's get back to the economy. reports "today show" third quarter gdp up 2%. anemic. if you take out a temporary defense spending spike, the number actually is only 1.5%. and that ain't strong enough to prevent a fiscal cliff recession. there's no safety margin at all. so let's talk to joe, deutsche

bank chief economist and michael pinto. look, joe, it's not a recession, but one point i want to get your take on. if we have to go into this fiscal cliff business, 2% growth, 1.5% growth affords us no safety margin whatsoever. >> that's exactly right, larry. i mean you can't take a 600 billion dollar tax hike and set a spending cuts even if you're a case withy keynesian to think growth would not be significant in the first half the year. no room to absorb it. >> wlits 2% or 1.5% or whatever do you see a recessionary threat, in other words this is a growth stall and in the old days economists used to call this kind of thing a growth recession. you yourself worry about a recession. >> we know we have a revenue recession. we have a profits version. we have a capital goods recession. now we have to look forward to austerity. my own take is that washington

is giving us a binary choice. either to embrace 1 trillion deficits going back four years and trillion deficits every year until we have a bond crisis and market crisis or go over the fiscal cliff. we have to do something. >> would you go over the cliff? alan greenspan would go over the cliff. alan greenspan said let the tax revenues go up. >> if washington is giving us a binary choice, trillion deficits or to have tax increase and spending reductions i would go over the fiscal cliff. >> larry i want to be more optimistic. michael let out a nice scenario. if we get growth next year, some pro growth policies put in place in the animal spirits of the specter come back it will come down. most of the deterioration has been due to lack of revenue growth. >> can i ask you a question,

joe. where is the growth going to come from? come from the federal reserve? >> no. >> the growth will come from consumer spending where there's tremendous pent up demand, continued growth in housing and business. capital stock, the capital stock of the united states has really been absolutely crushed the last few years. there's been no growth. companies need to reinvest but they had a lot of reasons not to. you can get very broad based growth with the right -- >> i want to take pinto's side. capital goods, you know what? capital goods are still below the peak of '07 and if i'm not mistaken, joe, capital goods, you know, long lives, plants and equipment and commercial building, it's still below the peak of early 2000. >> it is. >> we're not building any capital stock. no growth. >> but listen -- >> therefore the employment. >> we haven't but here's the thing, larry. why did this all stop? it was capital spending had been one of the bright spots until

housing took over. part of that is europe. part of that is the fiscal cliff. companies have to reinvest at some point otherwise your depre. >> the only thing saving mr. bernanke is the fiscal cliff. once it's solved and they will pull back you'll see m2 which is rising at 8% in the last six weeks, 7% year-over-year. that will take off. you're destroying the purchasing power of the middle class. that's not the way to grow an economy. >> is michael pinto right? is there an inflation threat inside this number. he's referring to the gdp figure 2%. the prior quarter was 1.5%. >> since this recession ended

we've only had three quarters in which nominal gdp has been 5% or better. i don't think the fed is creating inflation but i would agree with michael and i've been critical of the fed in many ways is not calibrated to the likely outcome of the economy and if growth does accelerate next year the fed will have a problem because i don't see them being able to unwind that portfolio as easy as they say they can. >> joe forget about unwinding the portfolio, charles evans inti made it about qe 4. qe3 was bouncing around -- the echos of qe3. >> evans said that the operation twist which is 45 billion that's going to wear off in january, okay. >> in december they will do treasury buying. >> 40 billion exists. 85 billion of new purchase of mbs and treasuries. every month. >> we'll be looking at a $4 trillion fed balance. >> how do you get out of that? how do you unwind that?

>> the thing that worries me is the leverage. the leverage that's building up in the system and the systemic risks that creates when they have to lower the portfolio and the capital losses they take in the portfolio. >> how about a dose of free market capitalism by which i mean quite simply some long term spending restraint, some long term entitlement reform, some tax reform to lower marginal tax rates for individuals and corporations, and flatten the base and tap the deduction. how about some free market capitalism so reinstall the animal spirits which i have to tell you the animal spirits, the entrepreneurial spirits of this country exist. they are just below the surface. but these crazy government policies are stifling. we need some capitalism. you know what jack kemp used to say to me you can't have capitalism without capital but

what we're doing is suppressing and penalizing capital. >> that's why you don't get the growth. if you get those policies you're talking about and they could come you'll get that growth. >> we will. we'll get and the deficits will go down and the debt will go down and the fed can figure out a different way. >> i got to get out of here. joe and michael terrific gentlemen thank you very much. have a great weekend. now let's just switch over and do some stock market work. stocks flat today down across the board for the whole week. dow dropped 236 points or nearly 2% on poor earnings equally poor revenues and a lot of future guidance downgrade. nothing too good. let's talking to our friend, a global chief investment strategist of blackrock. bull or bear right off the top? lousy couple of weeks. what your thinking here? >> tough couple of weeks. a lot will depend on the election. the market can grind hire. fundamentals still look decent. the problem is we got a lot of

uncertainty. if the election would remove some of that the market will hit higher to the end the year. if it doesn't december may be more volatile than we're used to. >> before we get to the pitfalls of the fiscal cliff and you think we're going over it, let me ask you when you look at these earnings reports i'll just read a couple. they are all laying off workers. that's what the thing is. colgate 6%. united technologies, cat, ford, it's not just the lousy earnings quarter they are actually laying off workers and shuttering plants. >> look, there's a reason to this and larry you touched on it in your last segment. companies have been able, done a great job of managing their earnings. that was not an awful earnings season. the problem is there's not a lot of top line growth only 40% of companies beat the estimate and the reason snopt hard to understand. we have a slow growth economy in

the u.s., 2% is better than q2 but not great. we have slow down in most of the rest of the world, europe, japan, even the emerging markets have been struggling and that's caused a dirth of top line growth. >> you believe there's no 11th hour rescue that's coming and we are going to have a gigantic tax hike and the fiscal cliff will be violated. you believe that. what do you tell investors? what does that mean? >> let me rephrase that just a little bit to add a nuance. what i would say is i believe there's a much better chance that we're going to go over the fiscal cliff meaning these issues are not going resolved by january 1st and the markets discounted. if that happens i think there's a problem because again most investors do believe there will be the traditional 11th hour compromise. what does that mean? you want to get a bit more defensive. think about lowering the risk in your portfolio. one other thing it means which is interesting what you're

starting to see now is that international stocks are outperforming the u.s. for the first time in a long time. i think that's ration enamel. because we're going into an environment where the u.s. becomes the big proximate source of risk. it may be a time to go you of the u.s. as a safe-haven. >> we'll leave it there. safe-haven outside of the u.s. spoken as a true internationalist. thank you ever so much. coming up folks international cyber attack on south carolina. million, yes millions of social security numbers stolen from south carolinians and governor mickey hailey is up in arms. your information is at risk. all the details up next. mike rowe here at a ford tell me fiona, who's having a big tire event? your ford dealer. who has 11 major brands to choose from? your ford dealer.

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>> south carolina governor told her state they all been hacked. the department of revenue was attacked two weeks ago and 3.6 million social security numbers were exposed. eamon javers joins us with the details of this latest cyber outrage. hello, again. >> reporter: good evening again. it was a massive hack attack in south carolina and officials there are calling the state's response here unprecedented, let me walk you through exactly what happened by the numbers here. these numbers are enormous.

starting with 3.6 million social security numbers, the number potentially exposed to the hackers. 387,000 debit and credit card numbers were exposed. although officials said that a lot of those will be protected by corporate security so maybe not to worry as much there. multiple hack attacks came in from august until september, south carolina hired the information security firm mandiant to help and the security was closed by october 20th. the governor in south carolina expressed outrage at this attack. >> i've made it very clear to my chief that i want this person slammed against the wall and make sure that this is something that we don't have to deal with but unfortunately in this day and time we do have -- it's no longer about just inside hackers, this is now about international hackers and what they can do and the information they have access to. >> reporter: and, larry, what

hailey said is the stuff is offering free credit monitoring to anybody who feels they were a victim of this attack. you have to contact the state to get information on how to access that corrected monitoring but they want to help citizens of south carolina to deal with this identity theft threat. >> governor haley mentioned international hackers. you know there's always been a buzz, iranian hackers, chinese hackers, is there any buzz like that? is that what she's referring to? >> reporter: officials were very cautious in the press conference not to suggest exactly where this was coming from. they did athe computers here were outside the country but we don't know where necessarily and as you say recently there have been reports of iranian attempts to hack u.s. financial company websites in this country. that has been going on over the past couple of weeks. obviously there's went a raft of chinese corporate espionage.

>> eamon javers is the author of "broker trader lawyer spy" the secret world of corporate espionage. >> romney has obama on run the. he's pulling up all the important polls. what does mitt need to do to seal the deal. a free market panel will square off next.

now with the latest presidential polls are any indication the election race for the white house could very well

be close to over if not over completely. take a look at some of these key national numbers. rasmussen reports romney 50, obama 47. gallup, romney leads the president by five. romney 51, obama 46. that number 50 is really crucial. meanwhile romney spoke in ames, iowa today and he talked growth,er talked take home pay. take a listen. >> last quarter our economy grew at just 2%. after the stimulus was passed the white house promised that the economy would now be growing at 4.3%. over twice as fast. we're going to create 12 million new jobs in just four years. we'll see rising take home pay. and we'll get americans economy growing at 4% a year more than double this year's rate. >> all right. that's pretty upbeat and even specific message. very interesting. let's talk about this. what will seal the deal for mitt romney. here's our cnbc contributors.

jimmy, today was an economics day. romney gave a pretty uplifting speech. sthapt what he should do the? >> listen to that speech well delivered. i couldn't help thinking that was the speech he should have given down in tampa a month or so ago. it was focused on what he wanted to do. very clearly outlined the wrong path the president took back in 2009. and i think it was a very forceful case. he needs to keep pounding home that economic pro growth message while the president seems to be focusing on two things, abortion and more of this sort of populism and redistribution. >> calling him the bser. i begged the romney camp to go

jobs and incentives. we have nine days, ten days. is that where mitt should stay? >> absolutely. i completely agree with jim that this was the speech he ought to have delivered in tampa all right that's past history. he did deliver it now. and he's closing this campaign with a very positive view about what needs to be done to get the country back on track. he's going large and the president with every passing day is diminishing his campaign and himself. he's going very small, these petty nit picky critiques of every stray word that romney says, whereas romney's message is the president did the wrong thing, yes he inherited a bad economy but he saed yes he inhearted a bad economy but he inherited a beautiful fantastic

nation. he never talks about that. >> right. let me go to ari. just a little horse race stuff. you can respond to the big picture stuff. just on the horse race stuff. the rule of thumb is if an incumbent president is below 50 let's say in these swing state polls he's got a rob because people already know him. so look. 49% even in wisconsin, president is below 50. florida, 55% romney 46% obama. that's done. colorado, romney 50%, obama 46%. there it is. he's so far below 50% i say colorado is done. now the tough one is ohio. i get that. but it's 48-48. again, obama below the 50% marker which tells me he can't win unless that number breaks up for him, what will he do? >> a lot of rules of thumb don't work as well when you look at how differently we vote today. you know in the year 2000 only one out of ten people voted

early. last cycle thanks in part to the obama campaign's mobilization it was 31% and this year it's headed towards 40%. you mentioned ohio. he has a 30-point lead among ballots cast in ohio. 35 points in iowa. the romney campaign's problem is they may have gotten a little hot but it is too late for them to fully benefit from that and when you look at the field programs, larry, i've been out, there i work in ohio and other places, you know, the obama campaign has about 800 field offices around the country. romney has 300 which is a point i made in my reuters article today. when you look at these numbers on the ground it's not about do people feel warm toward you, romney has improved broadly on that score but do you have a campaign to convert that on the ground and unfortunately for mitt romney he done. i think when they do the post they will look at did we go strong enough early and the answer is no. >> jimmy, ground game. we'll talk about ground game for

a minute. i'm not convinced the republican won't put together a good ground game. furthermore, i love the democrats. democrats may pull people out and wine up voting for romney and romney did well in the debates. who knows about ground game. >> from the best i can tell that the ground game -- listen maybe they pull off a per be effect ground game and romney terrible. maybe that's a percent. mitt romney will win this election by well more than 1%. i don't think the ground game is going to save. as far as this early voting it sound like clash for clunkers. you're trying to steal votes from the future. the net effect is at the end i think that romney will still have more votes in ohio. >> i'm sure you don't mean steal. that's not an accurate statement. the law allows early voting and encourage it in 32 votes >> you're right i didn't mean steal. >> the point is i heard people say there's early voting but

actually obama's early voting trails the early voting he had four years ago in 2008. i heard a lot of that. >> trails it considerably. >> that's an important point. i'm no expert on ground game either but do you think the republicans which are out, i believe out fundraising the democrats are not going to have enough ground game to get people to the polls? >> all of this -- the late money that you're hearing about that romney raised last month, you know, which was a huge figure, i can't r- 138 billion, he's raising money hand over fist. that's going now. all atds have been purchased. that's going to get out the vote efforts at this point which should be adequate. you know the thing to bear in mind is that when obama goes to a place like the university of ohio, you know, he went there four years ago and those kids reported to the polls in droves after he spoke at the university of ohio. this time half as many kids went and voted. so authors the reality.

>> love that. i just think -- i don't know. all right. i have a theory and you won like it. i think obama is not only going to lose ohio but i think he'll be with whoopd by mitt romney throughout the middle west. that's how the polls are shaping up. in places like iowa and yes ohio. quite likely michigan for all i know pennsylvania. wisconsin. i mean i think people are underestimating this romney surge. i'll give the last word. >> you mentioned iowa. unemployment in iowa is down to 5%. i think when you have these national polls widow show a romney edge it doesn't mean that it exists on the ground or in the places where this will be decided. so yes let's talk about it. have me back after the election. >> we're going to have you back before election and have jimmy back and mona back. thanks to all you. that it for this evening's show. thanks for watching. i'm larry kudlow. i'll just repeat i believe

romney is an underrated candidate right now and he's going to roll through the middle west. [ male announcer ] do you have the legal protection you need?

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